Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano :Eruption

“Well, the sun could go nova and fry the whole planet like a pork chop.” She sounded cheerful, of all things. And she told him why: “But it won’t go supernova. It’s not massive enough, poor thing.”

“Aww,” he said, which got a laugh out of her. “You start thinking about stuff like that, what can you do about it?”

“Not one goddamn thing. So why don’t we get drunk and screw?” Kelly said. He wondered if she knew that was a country song from before she was born. He doubted it like anything; her taste in music didn’t run that way. But it struck him as a terrific idea even so.

Justin Nachman charged into the dressing room at Neptune’s Resort waving a New Yorker around as if he intended to swat a fly with it. The dressing room was tiny and cramped and hot, and several flies were buzzing around. As far as Rob Ferguson could see, everything in New York City was tiny and cramped-except for the stuff that was enormous and mind-blowingly magnificent. Every bit of it, squalid and stupendous alike, was insanely overpriced.

The cover of the New Yorker, as Rob finally discovered when Justin stopped brandishing the magazine, was a photorealistic painting of an entrance to Yellowstone Park, with a brand-new volcano with a Fujiyama-style perfect cone sending up smoke and fire in the background. The sign at the entrance read CLOSED NEXT 1,000 YEARS. A long line of cars and motor homes stretched away in disappointment.

Seeing it reminded Rob of his father’s girlfriend. He shied away from that. He wanted things back home to be the way they were supposed to, which to him meant Dad and Mom together. He understood that what he wanted wasn’t about to happen. He’d understood that maybe even before Dad did. Understanding it was a long way from liking it, though.

“What are you doing with that thing?” he asked Justin.

Before the band’s front man could answer, Charlie Storer added, “It’s last week’s, anyhow.” The drummer actually read the New Yorker sometimes. Justin rarely read anything but e-mail and texts these days. He’d got over his biology degree bigtime.

Now, though, he opened the magazine to the front section in smaller type. “We’re in ‘Night Life-Rock and Pop’!” he burbled.

That got his bandmates’ attention, as he must have known it would. “Well, what’s it say?” they chorused, or words to that effect. Biff Thorvald might have been the loudest of them. Then again, so might Rob or Charlie.

“‘Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles bring a musical sensibility that mixes Cowboy Bebop with Bebop Deluxe from Oxnard, California, to Manhattan,’ ” Justin read.

“Oxnard!” Biff exclaimed in disgust. Oxnard was a gritty, grimy, working-class town closer to L.A. than to Santa Barbara, and had about as much in common with the latter as Passaic, New Jersey, did with the Hamptons. Charlie made gross-out noises, too.

“Yeah, I know. It all looks the same from this side of the country,” Justin said.

Rob thought of an old surreal map he’d seen: the USA from New York City’s viewpoint. About half of it was this side of the Hudson. Then there was upstate, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California, with a palm tree sticking up out of the Pacific to show Hawaii. Evidently, that kind of attitude lived on.

“I wasn’t done yet,” Justin said. He took a deep breath and read some more: “ ‘Under his Brillo fright wig, lead singer Justin Nachman effectively puts across the up-and-coming band’s quirky lyrics.’ ” He patted his Yiddishe Afro. “Me and Dylan, right?”

“In your dreams,” Charlie said sweetly.

“Your wet dreams,” Biff agreed.

Of course Rob razzed Justin, too. No responsible band member could do anything else. But at the same time he chewed on the New Yorker ’s assessment. Could you mix anime and one of the stranger British outfits from the 1970s? If you could, did Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles do it? That wasn’t altogether impossible, he supposed. But it struck him as more likely that the music writer was just getting cute.

Justin’s thoughts went in a different direction. They often did. He started waving the magazine around again. “Not the cover of the Rolling Stone, but as close as we’re likely to get,” he said.

The others nodded. Rob would have loved to make the cover of the Rolling Stone. That implied serious success; serious sales; with luck, even serious money. He knew it wasn’t in the cards. The music writer nailed the reason why, too. Quirky could get you to up-and-coming. To serious success? Not likely.

“Does the notice talk about Snakes and Ladders, too?” Charlie asked. That was an important question, all right. If the New Yorker didn’t mention the opening act, they’d get pissy about it, and who could blame them?

“I think so. Lemme check.” Justin opened the magazine once more. Hadn’t he already looked? If any of them was going to go all rock star, he was the guy. He was the one the New Yorker ’d mentioned by name, after all. But nobody’d put his ego ahead of the band yet. They’d been good about that, better than a bunch of outfits that had fallen apart for the sake of somebody’s usually aborted solo career. Justin read again: “‘With them is another California band, Snakes and Ladders, with a distinctive twang.’ ”

It was a mention, yeah, but not one that would thrill the other band. Their lead guitarist wanted to be Robin Trower, or maybe Hendrix (a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?). No, a distinctive twang wouldn’t make Lenny turn handsprings.

“Put that thing somewhere,” Rob said. “If they haven’t seen it, don’t show it to them. Don’t talk about it, either.”

By all the signs, Justin wanted to blow up the little notice till it was about the size of the tablets the Lord had given Moses on Mt. Sinai. He wanted to carry it around with him the way Moses had carried the tablets down the mountain, too. No, nothing wrong with his ego, not a bit. But he wasn’t to the point where he needed another chair for it. He might nod reluctantly, but nod he did. And he opened the case of a guitar he wasn’t planning on using tonight and stashed the New Yorker inside.

The way Snakes and Ladders played showed that they, or at least Lenny, had seen the notice. He tried to coax licks from his guitar that should have been illegal, or more likely impossible. And sometimes he did, and sometimes he sounded like a man trying to strangle a cat that didn’t feel like getting strangled.

It must have been an exhausting set to play. It sure as hell was an exhausting set to listen to, for Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles and for the crowd that packed Neptune’s Resort. The applause that followed it seemed more like relief than anything else.

A voice spoke from the heavens: “Now welcome Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles!” If God had been a classic-rock FM DJ, He would have sounded a lot like that.

More relieved applause cme as the band walked out on stage. Some of the relief, Rob judged, was that they weren’t Snakes and Ladders. You didn’t always know what you would get with SF and the ETs, but brooding angst wasn’t a big part of the mix.

Rob waved as he took his place behind Justin. He looked out over the crowd before the lights went down, scouting for cute ones. Who didn’t do that? Cute ones were a main reason for joining a band to begin with. And New York City offered a variety he hadn’t seen since the last time they played in Socal.

Justin waved, too. “Good to be here,” he said, sounding calm and sane-to anyone who knew him, an illusion, but a soothing one at the moment. “I always wanted to play Carnegie Hall.”

He got a laugh. The club was packed with people in jeans and T-shirts, not the fancy-dress crowd Rob imagined at Carnegie Hall. They sat on metal folding chairs. Carnegie Hall would have had better, softer, wider seats. Something in the air said a good part of the crowd hadn’t showered any time lately. Once upon a time, tobacco fumes-among others-would have added to the fug. Nowadays, New York City’s public antismoking rules were as ferocious as anybody’s. Which, of course, didn’t stop the band from taking a few tokes before going on.